On Friday, I began my first experiment in over four years.
Now, my normal inclination when planning an experiment is to squeeze in as many samples as humanly possible. And this, to be layered on top of a week’s worth of multi-tasking, leaving me with multiple experiments on the go and an absolute reliance on three-channel timers and copious lists to keep me sane. With due consideration of my long hiatus, I showed what I thought was a ridiculously stripped-down plan to the lab’s two leading experts on Drosophila cell culture RNAi: a pilot tissue culture experiment with a mere eight samples.
Tissue culture: the most fun you can have in a lab coat
I waited expectantly as the Ph.D. student studied my scribbles. But then he slowly started shaking his head.
“Your first experiment in four years?” he said dubiously. “Only four wells, maximum. Get rid of half of this.”
“Really?” I wanted to protest – I knew I could easily handle quadruple what I’d settled on – but the post-doc was nodding her head in agreement, and I found myself outvoted. Feeling like a lowly undergraduate rotation student again, I slunk back to my desk to drink coffee and get rid of four samples from my master plan.
When the time came, I was nearly tingling with anticipation. Remember, none of this was going to feel real until I had started actually working in the lab. In the past few days, one by one, the other lab denizens had finished unpacking and had started unfreezing and splitting cells, flipping flies, resuming their arrested work from a fortnight ago, gradually spending more and more time at their benches. I wanted to be part of it all.
I put on my purple nitrile gloves and a lab coat and began, shadowed by the very patient post-doc. Fetching ice, pulsing down the double-stranded RNA tubes, choosing which fly cell cultures looked the healthiest – and then I was sitting in front of the flow cabinet, ready to go.
Muscle memory?. It’s an absolute miracle. The minute I began to work, I felt like I was possessed by my former self – calm, poised, confident as I manipulated flasks, tubes, lids, hemocytometer, executed sterile technique, all free and easy as if in a dream. Where was all this coming from? What neuronal connections were being prodded from their long slumber – oi! wake up, she’s at it again. Why did the actions come so easily, when the facts and figures had been so recalcitrant and sluggish? Is it somehow more evolutionarily adaptive to remember how to do instead of how to write and speak?
Well, it seemed easy enough. But all bets are off if my cultures are contaminated on Monday.
I shall be doing non-computational work this week for the first time in 3 or more changes of hair style, so I sympathise.
Hi Ritchie. It’s nice to hear about computation folk doing wet work!
p.s. I think you’ve got a good look going at the moment.
So is doing lab work like riding a bicycle? Something you (or your body, really) never really forget (although you might be a bit wobbly at first)?
That’s my working hypothesis, Corie. Actually right now I feel very similar to how I felt last weekend, when I took my very first ever bicycle ride in England – I’m a skilled cyclist, but have only ever cycled on the right.
So I would say that taking up lab work after a long break is like cycling on the wrong side of the road. Not wobbly, but a bit uncertain which way to go on a roundabout!
. . . and you don’t need a crash helmet.
Yes, fortunately I am not currently working with anything hazardous. It’s such a luxury to know that I won’t be spending any time in the B-lab or with any agents more life-threatening than BL-2. On the downside, it looks as if the lab’s GMO license will have to be modified if I want to make any stable human cell lines. Apparently this involves submitting reams of paperwork, and possibly future offspring, to the Home Office. Wouldn’t want to unleash any killer HeLa + GFP-actin lines onto the free world, now would we?
This all reminds me of the time I tried to order COS-7 cells while in the Netherlands. COS-7 were originally derived, many years ago, from African Green monkeys — which are an endangered species. As I was attempting to “import an endangered species” into the Netherlands, my shipment from ATCC was held at Schiphol Airport for four days for the non-negotiable inspection — by which time the dry ice had melted and my cells were ruined. (Yes, due to this bureaucratic red tape, it is physically impossible to import COS-7 into the Netherlands.)
But I digress!
“On the downside, it looks as if the lab’s GMO license will have to be modified if I want to make any stable human cell lines. ”
Um. Nothing to see here, move along.
Your digression is an interesting one. It’s almost impossible to import plasmids furrfu into Austraylya. Don’t even think about sending an eppie and going through AQIS; just spot some on filter paper and keep schtumm. And mycoplasma primers? It is as to laugh.
You see, the Australian authorities aren’t as dim as you think. Someone has to thwart your diabolical plan to take over the world via oligos.
It all goes back to people’s perceptions of risk, which has become terrifically skewed. The same official who wants to ban your killer plasmids to protect the fine citizens of Oz probably has no qualms about jumping into his car and driving on a motorway.
(Wait a minute, do you guys have motorways down there?)
Heh. Motorways and freeways, but I’m not clear on the distinction. And ‘P’ platers in 3.5 – 5.8 litre V6s and V8s. Gah
Eh? Is their an antipodal translator in the house?
Before you even say it, Grant, I meant ‘there’. (When oh when will the ‘edit comments’ functionality go live?)